The Disowned, Volume 1.

tempered with

stre of that

d and dreamli

music of her

soft soul whi

that volumed eye.-O'

was vigorous and delicious, and at times so suddenly intense as to appear to t

of those golden wanderers from the Canary Isles which hear to our colder land some of the gentlest music of their skies and zephyrs. The window, reaching to the ground, was open, and looked, through the clusters of jessamine and honeysuckle which surrounded the low veranda, beyond upon thick and frequent copses of blossoming shrubs, redolent of spring and sparkling in the

ngers. The comb that had confined her tresses lay at her feet, and the high dress which concealed her swelling breast had been loosened, to give vent to the suffocating and indignant throbbings which had rebelled against its cincture; all appeared to announce that bitterness of grief when the mind, as it w

and from the age of four to that of seventeen Isabel suffered every insult and every degradation which could be inflicted upon her by the tyranny of her two protectors. Her spirit, however, was far from being broken by the rude shocks it received; on the contrary, her mind, gentleness itself to the kind, rose indignantly against the unjust. It was true that the sense of wrong did not break forth audibly; for, though susceptible, Isabel was meek, and her pride was concealed by the outward softness and feminacy of her temper: but she stole away from those who had wounded her heart or trampled upon its feelings, and nourished with secret but passionate tears the memory of the harshness or injustice she had endured. Yet she was not vindictive: her resentment was a noble not a debasing feeling; once, when she was yet a child, M

d not last long: the chaste Diana had been too spoiled by the prosperity of many years for the sickness of a single month to effect much good in her disposition. Her old habits were soon resumed; and though it is probable that her heart was in reality softened towards the poor

the homage of many lips and hearts, and if her pride was perpetually galled and her feelings insulted in private, her vanity (had that equalled her pride and her feelings in its susceptibility) would in no slight measure

to one so situated, which, while they gave to her secret moments of solitude a powerful but vague attraction, probably only

lined yearningly towards passionate affections; of a temper where romance was only concealed from the many to become more seductive to the few; unsocial, but benevolent; disliked, but respected; of the austerest demeanour, but of passions the most fervid, though the most carefully concealed,-this man united within himself all that repels the common mass of his species, and all that irresistibly wins and fascinates the rare and romantic few. To these qualities were added a carriage and bearing of that high and commanding order which men mistake for arrogan

object which he could torment and tyrannize over, no sooner did the General discover the attachment of his young relation than he peremptorily forbade its indulgence, and

dent a situation and connected with such new blood as Isabel St. Leger, that, with that arrogance which relations, however distant, think themselves authorized to assume, he enjoined his cousin, upon pain of forfeiture of favour and fortun

el to the reader, and described to him the chamber to which, in all her troubles and humil

heard it not. The thick copse that darkened the left side of the veranda was pierced, and a man passed within the covered space, and stood still and silent before the wind

es were finely and accurately formed; and had not ill health, long travel, or severe thought deepened too much the lines of the countenance, and sharpened its contour, the classic perfection of those features would have rendered him undeniably and even eminently handsome. As it was, the paleness and the somewhat worn character

s common to the age of the stranger, who could scarcely have attained his twenty-sixth year, it betokened, at leas

room, stole towards the spot on which Isabel was sitting. He leaned over her chair, and his eye rested u

ess for one, of unconscious and

her lover's

blissful and bright sensations, lay mingled, like meeting waters, in one sunny stream of heartfelt a

sabel, in a low voice,

the conquest they obtained. I listened only to a deceitful delusion when I imagined I was obeying the dictates of reason. Ah, dearest, why sho

a beggar and an outcast. You must not link your fate with mine. I could bear, Heaven knows how

and he held with his burning kisses. "Have I not enough for both

ing; and I shall see you, for whom in my fond and bright dreams I have presaged everything great and exalted, buried in an obscurity from which your talents can never rise, and

s the full desolation of her despair crowded fast and dark upon the orphan's mind, she sank back upon her chair in very sickness o

. Perhaps you say truly when you tell me that the possessions of my house shall melt away from me, and that my relation will not offer to me the precarious bounty

ed upon his told, in their despondency, how little

ven; those years make the prime and verdure of our lives; let us not waste them in mourning over blighted hopes and severed hearts; let us sn

s forever flashed upon her mind. It passed from her the moment it was formed; and, rising from a situation in which the touch of that dear hand and the breath of those wooing lips endangere

ur reasonable ambition. Go (and here her voice faltered for a moment, but soon recovered its tone), go, Algernon, dear Algernon; and if my foolish heart will not ask you to think of me no more, I can at least implore y

a new source of independence; if I can carve out a road where the ambition you erroneously impute to me can be gratified, as well as the more moderate wish

heir import in the blushing cheek and the heaving bosom, and the lips which one ray of hope and comfort was sufficient to kindle into smiles. He g

e of that shrinking and trembling form,-and then, as the door closed upon his view, he felt that the sunshine of